“I’m sorry, Devil, but this big sis will have to ask you to stop.”
I suddenly heard Vex decree from behind me. Once I ascertained that it was indeed her, I glanced down at her feet with curiosity because she was still dressed in her smoking hot night dress which was accompanied by a fitting high-heeled shoe. She was standing on top of shadows that gained a hardened physical form.
… I have absolutely no clue what this weird woman’s class was.
“What’s wrong? There are still enemies to slay.” I asked after deciding to just move on.
She grimaced at my statement. “That’s true, but you’re about to destroy the arena…”
Oh. I looked around once again and this time I paid close attention to the artifacts surrounding us, and now I saw numerous figures fiddling around with them. I think they were in the middle of repairing the artifacts.
“You see, this was meant to be a tournament for youngsters, and no youngster has an Elemental Sovereign class… or so we thought. This was all very badass, by the way! I’m sure Lady Black Fang is very happy right now. You’d made this big sis very proud too!”
I ignored her nonsense and instead replied, “But we have multiple ‘mancers’ in our midst, they could cause a similar level of destruction.” I didn’t quite understand what the issue was.
“That’s right, however, our artifacts are not some static items that have shields that can withstand X amount of damage. They were crafted by a now-deceased dwarven artificing master who found himself in our midst, and he made them with the ability to adapt to the situation. If he didn’t do so, their damage-bearing capacity would’ve been much lower.
When Selene Cross hurls a fire spell, the relevant artifact will specifically defend against fire damage. However, you keep summoning spells of four differing elements on the scale of a ‘mancer’ who specialized in one of them, making the artifacts overload. To sum it up, the artifacts can’t keep up with you, you will soon break the veil and kill the audience, thus I had to step in.”
“I see.” I nodded with understanding. It was already a big feat on their part to allow level 1 civilians to watch this great event from such a close distance. Their measures could only amount to this much.
It is what it is.
Iris suddenly landed next to me with a loud crash. As soon as the woman stood up, she continued her glaring session aimed at my person which she started when I enveloped her in my water prison. Her dark armor was draped in water which was dripping to the ground beneath her.
“Good to see you, partner.”
“Don’t you dare call me partner…” She growled before continuing, “do you think I’m some aquatic creature? I have no gills, bastard.”
I had to chuckle at her words. It was true that me having an amicable conversation with Vex while she was up in the sky in my water bubble wasn’t the nicest of gestures I could’ve made. In my defense, I was fully aware that she would not suffocate anytime soon. “I was banned from going all out again. Let’s cut some monsters up with our blades, shall we?”
She didn’t reply, instead turned up the heat in her eyes with which she was glaring at me. My attempt to move on didn’t quite work.
“[Burning Hands].” I intoned the spell which I used to have a friendly chatting session with Selene after her capture. However, I didn’t touch anyone this time around. Instead, I used the heat to dry the wet Iris by holding my hands just close enough to her body to be effective but not painful.
Although her fierce glaring didn’t lessen in its intensity, I couldn’t help but feel as if her annoyance with me was decreasing with every passing second. I had to exert a great amount of control over my body so that I didn’t burst out into laughter when I recognized that she was like a wild kitten whose fur coating got wet so she was very irritable, but now that I was doing my best to dry her, she struggled to keep being mad at me.
She suddenly became a lot more adorable in my eyes now that I couldn’t shake the image.
It took a few seconds for my spell to do its intended job. “There, all good. Can you forgive me?”
She eyed me for a bit before turning on her heels and scoffing, after which she began killing a horde of monsters as well as the humans that were in the middle of fighting them.
Enjoy exclusive adventures from empire
“So, ‘big sis’, what can you tell me about my permissions to use magic?” I asked while turning toward Vex.
She smiled merrily when I called her as such. “You can use all of the basic tier spells and also the spells of one intermediate element of your choosing. If you plan on kicking Selene’s butt, then please choose fire.”
Either she was a terrific actor or her words meant that the Consortium had no clue of my [Subjugation] of Selene and the others. Vex was our examiner in the second round where we invaded the Phantom League, so she was fully aware of the bad blood between me and Selene as she was there for the weeks of travel where the air was tense between us, hence her thinking that I wanted to kick the Pyromancer woman out of the competition.
Vex must’ve taken my momentary silence as me being dissatisfied, as she spoke up once again, “for the final event of tonight, we’ll arrange a proper defensive artifact formation so that you can go all out once again. Due to the tremendous size of the arena, the artifacts are placed far apart from each other and thus their veils are stretched thin. We can overlap multiple artifacts to create a sturdier shield if the area in which people fight is smaller.”
“Thanks, I appreciate it.” I nodded.
“Devil! Devil! Devil!” Loud chanting sounded from the audience once they managed to get over the shock my display had caused. Almost none of them realized the implications of my displayed prowess, but they saw ‘big, epic booms’ that amazed them. It was the perfect spectacle these civilians wanted to see in an event where supernaturals fought each other.
“Hehehe! You’ll get a lot of fans after tonight, try not to drown in pussy, m’kay?” Vex giggled as she uttered her line as if it were completely normal.
“Thanks. By the way, you’re on my ‘to-do’ list as well, alongside your two sisters.”
They were some of the hottest women I’d ever seen, plus they were all tremendously strong, so they checked two of the most important boxes that were required to leave a strong first impression on me.
Lucille and Aurora were weak when I met them, hence they didn’t leave that strong of a first impression on me, thus I didn’t specifically wish to add them to my harem. That only changed after I got to know them better. Jasmine was going down the same path right now. I didn’t care much for her when I first saw her despite her evident beauty, and I only started doing so throughout our many interactions.